Plant Science

In April 1982, ethnobotanist Wade Davis arrived in Haiti to investigate two documented cases of zombies - people who had reappeared in Haitian society years after they had been officially declared dead and had been buried. Drawn into a netherworld of rituals and celebrations, Davis penetrated the vodoun mystique deeply enough to place zombification in its proper context within vodoun culture. In the course of his investigation, Davis came to realize that the story of vodoun is the history of Haiti.

Trouet, a leading tree-ring scientist, takes us out into the field, from remote African villages to radioactive Russian forests, offering listeners an insider's look at tree-ring research, a discipline formally known as dendrochronology. Tracing her own professional journey while exploring dendrochronology's history and applications, Trouet describes the basics of how tell-tale tree cores are collected and dated with ring-by-ring precision, explaining the unexpected and momentous insights we've gained from the resulting samples.

An accessible and compelling story of a scientist's discovery of plant communication and how it influenced her research and changed her life.

Within the minutes of this audiobook, you will discover a blend of plant wisdom and a love of astrology blended in a cauldron of storytelling and poetry. Not merely an herbal compendium, not only historic storytelling and a weaving of ancestor history, The Weaving: Plants, Planets and Women follows the path of herbal medicine from roots in the Earth to planets in the sky. Abrah Arneson brews up magic in every minute.

In Plant Teachers, Narby and Pizuri hold a cross-cultural dialogue that explores the similarities between ayahuasca and tobacco, the role of these plants in indigenous cultures, and the hidden truths they reveal about nature. Juxtaposing two distinct worldviews, Plant Teachers invites listeners on a wide-ranging journey through anthropology, botany, and biochemistry, while raising tantalizing questions about the relationship between science and other ways of knowing.

If the history of the Earth were compressed down to a year, our species would arise in the last thirty minutes or so of the final hour. But life itself is not such a late arrival: It has existed on Earth for something like 3.7 billion years—most of our planet’s history and over a quarter of the age of the universe (as far as we can tell). What have these organisms—bacteria, animals, plants, and the rest—done in all this time? In Living on Earth, the philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith proposes a new way of understanding how the actions of living beings have shaped our planet.

Riley Black brings us back in time to prehistoric seas, swamps, forests, and savannas where critical moments in plant evolution unfolded. Each chapter stars plants and animals alike, underscoring how the interactions between species have helped shape the world we call home. As the chapters move upwards in time, Black guides listeners along the burgeoning trunk of the Tree of Life, stopping to appreciate branches of an evolutionary story that links the world we know with one we can only just perceive now through the silent stone, from ancient roots to the present.

We all take for granted the idea that being in nature makes us feel better. But if you were a skeptic who wanted hard scientific evidence for this idea, where would you look? And how would that evidence be gathered? It wasn't until Dr. Kathy Willis was asked to contribute to an international project looking for the societal benefits we gain from plants that she stumbled across a study that radically changed the way she saw the natural world. In the study there was clear proof that patients recovering from gall bladder operations recovered more quickly if they were looking at trees.

There are redwoods in California that were ancient by the time Columbus first landed and pines still alive that germinated around the time humans invented writing. There are Douglas firs as tall as skyscrapers and a banyan tree in Calcutta as big as a football field. From the tallest to the smallest, trees inspire wonder in all of us, and in The Tree, Colin Tudge travels around the world - throughout the United States, the Costa Rican rain forest, Panama and Brazil, India, New Zealand, China, and most of Europe - bringing to life stories and facts about the trees around us.

Beginning with opium, the “joy plant,” which has been used for 10,000 years, Thomas Hager tells a captivating story of medicine. His subjects include the largely forgotten female pioneer who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain, the infamous knockout drops, the first antibiotic, which saved countless lives, the first antipsychotic, which helped empty public mental hospitals, Viagra, statins, and the new frontier of monoclonal antibodies. This is a deep, wide-ranging, and wildly entertaining book.

The first mass dungeon break in history grows nearer. Nick and his growing guild are training against time to be ready to stop this “Red Death” before it ever happens, but no one outside Nick’s closest circle knows this true purpose behind their intense tactical team-combat exercises. The secret weighs heavily on Nick as he considers revealing the truth of his regression to his found family, the Walters, and his other allies, hoping they will believe him and still support him when he needs them most.

Decades of research document plants' impressive abilities: they communicate with one another, manipulate other species, and move in sophisticated ways. Lesser known, however, is the new evidence that plants may actually be sentient. Although plants may not have brains, their microscopic commerce exposes a system not unlike the neuronal networks running through our own bodies. Paco Calvo offers an entirely new perspective on plant biology. In Planta Sapiens, he shows for the first time how we can use tools developed in animal cognition studies in a quest to deeply understand plant intelligence.

The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic is both an epic story and a cry to the heart of humanity based on the author’s realization that human survival depends on keeping alive the seeds of our “original forgotten spiritual excellence.” Prechtel relates our current state of ecological crisis to the rapid disappearance of biodiversity, indigenous cultures, and shared human values. He demonstrates how real human culture is exterminated when real (not genetically modified) seeds are lost.

Why does my cherry tree blossom but never fruit? What's the most effective slug deterrent? Could I breed my own unique variety of flower? The world of gardening can be a mystifying place, with so many instructions to follow and often little explanation as to why. From hands-on advice to an exploration of the mental health benefits of gardening, whilst also looking at sustainable practice and the positive impact gardening can have during a climate crisis, Science of Gardening debunks myths, and reveals the latest science only taught at horticultural college.

For Nick Gallows, time is everything, his most important resource as he tries to prevent the Apocalypse. Yet, time is also an enemy, a clock ticking down to the death of humanity—and faster than Nick knows. The clandestine Forebears of Ingenga snake their shadowy tendrils through every echelon of society in an effort to expedite the end, and after Nick foiled their plans once, their crosshairs have settled on him and his burgeoning guild.

Plants make pollen so more plants can grow. The pollen needs to get from plant to plant. How does this happen? Let’s investigate pollination!

Plants are living things. They need certain things to grow and live. What are they? Let’s investigate what plants need to survive!

Truly a medicine for body and soul, one of cannabis’ greatest gifts is its remarkable potential for spiritual healing and awakening. In this authoritative guide, editor Stephen Gray and 17 other influential voices of the modern cannabis movement explore the spiritual benefits of cannabis and offer guidance on how to interact with the intelligence of this plant ally, a companion and supporter of humanity for millennia.

Desperate to join the expedition searching for her mother and the other missing Botanists, Daisy and her friends abandon the safety of magical Mallowmarsh. Facing danger on the high seas, they find themselves pursued across the waves by ruthless Grim Reapers. But they will need help to defeat these dangerous enemies. Their greatest hope: to find the legendary Iffenwild, a mysterious city hidden beyond the sea and lost to time. New discoveries await, and a strange botanical magic stirs beneath the waves.

Botany For Dummies gives you a thorough overview of the fundamentals of botany, but in simple terms that anyone can understand. Great for supplementing your botany coursework or brushing up before an exam, this book covers plant evolution, the structure and function of plant cells, and plant identification. Plus, you'll learn about how plants of different types are changing and adapting in response to changing climates. This new edition goes into more detail on fungi—not technically plants, but no one is holding that against them.